Bear
in mind that these verses were set in the context of Jesus last week in Jerusalem.
He had cleansed the temple and drove out the money-changers. He was also confronted
by the scribes, chief priests, Pharisees, Herodians, and the Sadducees, all
trying to snare Him in His words. When the Pharisees saw that He had debunked
the Sadducees concerning the doctrine of the resurrection, they asked Him one
question. They asked, “Teacher, which is the
great commandment in the Law?” The answer Jesus gave was so deeply based on the
Ten Commandments of Moses, so precise, so deeply searching and so challenging. In
answering the question, Jesus gave us the priorities we should have in life.
Life
must begin with God. He must be at the top of our priorities. We must love Him
first. But we all know that we can only love God because He first loved us. No
one can truly love God until he or she first realizes that God has first loved
him or her. Therefore our love for Him is a response to His love for us. We are
never to forget that His love is the source of all that we have in life. He continually
reaches out to us from every conceivable angle. He provides the life we live,
the air we breathe, the food we eat, the sunshine and the shelter we enjoy, and
etc. Hence loving Him should be a
natural outflow of all that He has showered upon us. All the more so when we consider
the suffering and the cross He bore to give us the liberty from the power of
our guilt and sin. This ultimate expression of love on Calvary was where
Matthew was leading us toward.
How
are we to love Him? The only proper response of our heart who had been touched
by His redeeming love is to love Him in return. To love Him with all our heart,
soul, mind and strength. Notice that the order we are to love God begins from
the inside out. It must proceed from our heart flowing through the soul to the
mind and then to the strength. The heart here is used to refer to the will.
When our will has made the decision to love Him, our whole system will respond
to that choice made. Loving God is the most important thing in life. When we
put loving Him as the top priority, everything else will flow from that love.
And when we love anything else first, the whole process will soon run dry. As we
love God, loving our neighbors become an easier task. Notice that we must love
our fellowmen as we would love ourselves.
In
the Calvary that Jesus would soon be going through, we see the summary of the
Ten Commandments fully expressed. Christ had loved God with all that He had –
heart. Soul, mind and strength. And by dying for us on the cross, He
demonstrated that He had loved us (His neighbors) as Himself. What about us? Have we loved God? Have we
loved others as we ought?
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